Are nuclear arsenals safe from cyber-attack? Could terrorists launch a nuclear weapon through hacking? Are we standing at the edge of a major technological challenge to global nuclear order?

We are proud to welcome Andrew Futter whose ground-breaking book about the cyber threat to nuclear weapons will be published by Georgetown University Press.

Hacking the Bomb provides the first ever comprehensive assessment of this worrying and little-understood strategic development, and it explains how myriad new cyber challenges will impact the way that the world thinks about and manages the ultimate weapon. The book cuts through the hype surrounding the cyber phenomenon and provides a framework through which to understand and proactively address the implications of the emerging cyber-nuclear nexus. It does this by tracing the cyber challenge right across the nuclear weapons enterprise, explains the important differences between types of cyber threats, and unpacks how cyber capabilities will impact strategic thinking, nuclear balances, deterrence thinking, and crisis management. The book makes the case for restraint in the cyber realm when it comes to nuclear weapons given the considerable risks of commingling weapons of mass disruption with weapons of mass destruction, and argues against establishing a dangerous norm of "hacking the bomb."

How to Think about Nuclear CrisesMark Bell, University of Minnesota, and Julia Macdonald, University of Denver

Abstract: How dangerous are nuclear crises? What dynamics underpin how they unfold? Recent tensions between North Korea and the United States have exposed profound disagreement among scholars and analysts.We reconcile these apparently contradictory views by showing the circumstances in which different models of nuclear crises should be expected to hold. Nuclear crises should be expected to have very different dynamics depending on two variables: the incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis, and the extent to which escalation is controllable by the leaders involved. Variation across these two dimensions generate four distinct models of nuclear crises, which we label as the “staircase” model; the “stability-instability” model; the “brinkmanship” model; and the “firestorm” model. These models correspond to well-established ways of thinking about nuclear weapons, but no one model of nuclear crises is “correct.” Different models should be expected to apply in different cases, and we should interpret nuclear crises very differently according to which model is most appropriate. We demonstrate the utility of our framework using the cases of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, 1999 Kargil War, and ongoing U.S.-North Korea tensions.

Strategic Stability in Two Nuclear Posture ReviewsProfessor Sharon K. Weiner, American University, Washington D.C. member of the advisory board of the chair of excellence in security studies.

Abstract: Deterrence is an ambiguous guide for translating presidential guidance into nuclear force structure and strategy. Although claims are made that these choices are linked to national security needs and threats, I bring in the context of bureaucratic structure. Using the 2010 Obama Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and the 2018 Trump NPR as case studies, I show how both NPRs claim to justify essentially the same nuclear modernization plan, but this plan has significantly different consequences for strategic stability when seen within the bureaucratic and organizational contexts that will implement it under Trump.

Abstract : By the beginning of the 1960s, the French nuclear program was notable for its tangible presence around the globe—France’s nuclear reach. Weapons testing ranges, numerous scientific exchanges, a seat on the IAEA’s governing board, all characterized the program and its successes in the eyes of its leadership. Yet the most remarkable and curious reach of the program was something many in the program may not have been aware of: French uranium geologists, inspecting the prospects of the sands and soils of over two dozen different countries on every continent. This paper explores this phenomenon, and considers the link between this form of “nuclear reach” and the others aforementioned. Utilizing sources in France, the US, and at the IAEA archives in Vienna, it concludes that the status of uranium, dynamic and shifting during the first decade of the nuclear age, and the prospection of uranium by French geologists around the globe, reveal a great deal about the evolving ambitions of the French nuclear leadership; in the end, geophysics, geochemistry, and ore concentration techniques should be viewed alongside nucleonics and nuclear reactor design as lynchpin techniques of the nuclear age, and the diplomatic and commercial stakes involved as essential elements of the calculations of the French nuclear leadership.